The connection between town and palace was very close. The fortified walls of the former inclosed a large rectangular parallelogram (Vol. I. Fig. 144), while the lofty platform on which the structures composing the king’s dwelling were reared, was placed, as it were, astride of the wall on its north-western face. Its pavement was on a level with the summit of the wall.[11] Thus attached to the _enceinte_ the palace esplanade shared the protection of its parapet and flanking towers, while it stood boldly out, like an enormous bastion, from the stretch of wall of which it formed a part. From three of its faces it commanded a view of the plain, the river, and the neighbouring mountains, so that the requirements of health and pleasure were remembered at the same time as those of safety. As for placing the king’s dwelling, as it might have been placed by a modern architect, at some distance from the town, and upon the summit of some gentle height, such a notion was quite outside Assyrian ideas. A country site would have been too easily accessible to the numerous enemies of the Assyrian kings--those eastern Attilas, who could only feel themselves safe when sheltered by the impenetrable walls of dwellings perched upon an artificial hill, from which the whole surrounding country could be watched. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--Plan of Sargon’s palace in its present state; from Place.] We must refer those who wish to study the arrangements of Sargon’s palace in detail to the plans and letterpress of Place. Botta discovered fourteen apartments; Place cleared one hundred and eighty-six. A few more were suggested by him on his restored plan at points where symmetry seemed to demand their existence. His plan, therefore, includes in all, two hundred and nine apartments of various sizes.[12] The adjoining plan, which shows the actual state of the ruins, is sufficient to show the general arrangement (Fig. 3).[13] The longitudinal section (Fig. 4) is taken through the central axis of the building, the position of the staged-tower showing that it is the western half of the palace that has been chosen for reproduction. A good idea of the general physiognomy of the whole may be obtained from our Plate V. This is not a mere reduction from Thomas’s restoration;[14] several details have been sensibly modified. Thus, on the principal façade, barrel vaults have been substituted for domes as being on the whole more probable; battlements have been placed on the parapet of the double ramp, and the perspective, which is very imperfect in Thomas’s plate, has been corrected. Our view is supposed to be taken at some sixteen hundred feet above the ground and at a considerable distance south-east of the platform. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--Longitudinal section through the palace of Sargon; compiled from Thomas.]